


Crusade

by Brynncognito



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Gen, Many Happy Returns, Post-Reichenbach, Sherlock series 3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-24
Updated: 2013-12-24
Packaged: 2018-01-05 23:45:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1099964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brynncognito/pseuds/Brynncognito
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Anderson's reasons for wanting to prove Sherlock's alive are in part selfish, and in part regretful and remorseful.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Crusade

**Author's Note:**

> I had to do something with the unexpected amount of Anderson feels the mini-episode gave me. Don't read unless you've seen it!

There was something to all this. There had to be.

Anderson’s initial claims that Sherlock was alive and well, deducing and insulting and solving cases somewhere on the other side of Europe, had drawn sighs and sad smiles and headshakes from Greg and Sally, at first. If _anyone_ understood his need to bring the bugger back from the dead, it was those two. They’d each played their part in Moriarty’s final plans to make Sherlock fall, quite literally, from grace, and it had left wounds on each member of the Yard that had only healed to itching scars years after Sherlock’s suicide.

 _No_ , Anderson thought firmly, shoving away the latest newspaper clippings he’d collected that supported his theories. He wouldn’t call it a suicide at all, because he _knew_ it was fake. That smug prat had fooled them all, and _that_ was the only thing that had made his gnawing, churning guilt any better.

For a time, Anderson had taken to drinking – not the type the Yard sometimes partook of in celebration of a particularly thoroughly closed case, but the kind that involved sinking deep into one’s own thoughts in a dimly lit living room. He and Sherlock had never been what anyone would call _friends_ , but a large amount of their insults and bickering was more friendly rivalry than anything, and the parts of it were less than friendly on his part now settled heavily in his chest as pure regret. They _could_ have gotten along much closer, and he knew it. Just one more _could-have-been_ to add to his list of failures, a list that had grown seemingly exponentially since Sherlock's fall.

Tonight, at least, Anderson wasn’t drinking. He hadn’t since Greg and Sally had staged a sort of intervention. Even _John_ had gotten in on it, and that was what had snapped him out of things properly. If Sherlock’s best friend (or whatever those two had been, he had his suspicions) could forgive him, he had to learn how to forgive himself.

This crusade, this desperate compilation of sightings and every single case he could find that bore any possible hint of Sherlock’s signature, this was the best way he’d come up with yet for him to do that. Maybe if—no, _when_ , he had to correct himself firmly, Sherlock made his undoubtedly dramatic return, he’d finally be able to leave the last few splinters behind.

 _Soon_ , he hoped. So long as he was reading the signs correctly.


End file.
